Tag: smartphone payments

As the company battles to survive and rebuild its relevance, transactions are the new strategy.

As BlackBerry desperately attempts to remain afloat and recreate itself into a position of relevance in the technology world, this Canadian handset maker is now placing a considerable focus on mobile payments as a new major element of its overall strategy.

While the market is currently clearly dominated by Android and iOS devices, BlackBerry isn’t giving up.

The company has now announced its intentions to become considerably more aggressive in the highly competitive and rapidly moving mobile payments environment. It has also confirmed a new three year agreement in which it has now entered with EnStream LP, which is a smartphone transactions joint venture that is owned by Bell, Rogers, and TELUS, the largest wireless carriers in Canada.

The agreement is to provide a secure mobile payments transaction services platform for Canadian banks and consumers.

This agreement will give EnStream the ability to leverage the infrastructure at BlackBerry in order to be able to give a range of mobile operators and financial institutions the capability to provision sensitive credit and debit card data into any NFC technology enabled smartphone.

BlackBerry released a statement that said that “Today the mobile payments space is primed for growth.” It used data that had been produced by Gartner in order to back this up, showing that it has been predicted that the total value of the transactions that will be completed through the use of smartphone technology will rise from where it had been in 2012, at $35 billion, to reach $173 billion by the close of 2017. That represents a tremendous 31 percent compound annual growth rate.

This forecast also includes the purchase of tickets and merchandise, as well as of bill payments. That said, it does not include airtime top-ups or funds that are sent from person to person.

BlackBerry’s statement went on to further explain its position that “Supporting mobile payments reinforces BlackBerry’s ability to provide unique services that help enterprise customers deploy secure mobile solutions that help promote productivity among their workforce and drive new revenue streams.”

New app aims to help Panera Bread recover from operational struggles

Panera Bread Company has launched a new mobile application that aims to help the company recover from the operational struggles it has faced over the past 18 months. The mobile app is meant to help the company’s restaurants better manage the high volume of orders they receive during peak hours by taking advantage of the mobile commerce scene. More consumers are beginning to use their mobile devices in restaurants to pay for their purchases and many of these consumers are praising the efficient nature of mobile commerce services being provided by these restaurants.

App could improve the efficiency on Panera Bread restaurants

The new mobile application aims to address efficiency and consumer satisfaction issues by giving customers the ability to order and purchase food from Panera Bread restaurants using a mobile device. The application is free and can even be used to find Panera Bread locations using geolocation services. The company expects that restaurant efficiency will be increased as the new application becomes more widely used among consumers.

Consumers are becoming mobile-centric

Mobile commerce continues to attract a great deal of attention across numerous industries as the demand for mobile-centric services continues to raise among consumers. People are eager to have their mobile devices play a more important role in their daily lives and mobile commerce represents the next step in the process of integrating mobile technology with people’s lives. As the demand for mobile services continues to rise among consumers, businesses are beginning to take steps to meet this demand more aggressively.

Mobile commerce is not a guaranteed success with most consumers due to poor experiences in the past

While mobile commerce is in high demand, it can be difficult for companies to find success with their mobile payments endeavors. In the past, retailers have tried to engage consumers with their own mobile commerce platforms only to find that these platforms were unable to live up to the expectations that consumers have. Poor experiences with these platforms have caused many people to avoid mobile commerce services being offered in the retail sector.